TWITTER AND FACEBOOK SNUB THE AKP GOVERNMENT

TURKEY – Few hours after Transport and Communications Minister Binali Yıldırım told, “Facebook has been co-operating with Turkish authorities for a long time, they have a presence in Turkey. We have no problems with them, and Twitter will probably comply too. Otherwise this is a situation that cannot be sustained,” the press, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo stated that they don’t have any perspective on the Gezi Park demonstrations, regarding to the posts on the micro-blogging website.

During a conference at the Brookings Institute in Washington, “You can use our open public platform to say what you believe. That’s what users in Turkey are doing. We don’t editorialize what’s on Twitter. The platform itself doesn’t have perspective on this,” said Costolo.

Dick Costolo also told, he was “closely following” the situation in Turkey and that he was conscious of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s remarks about Twitter.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed Twitter for being a “troublemaker,” he said “The finest lies are on it,” during the first week of the protests.

Facebook also denied binali Yıldırım’s caliams with a statement declaring that it did not hand over any user data to Turkish authorities despite government requests to do so in relation to the ongoing protests in the country. Facebook officials also voiced their concerns about proposals that internet companies may have to provide user data.

Facebook’s official statement;

Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests. More generally, we reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child, which has been the case in only a small fraction of the requests we have received.

We are concerned about legislative proposals that might purport to require Internet companies to provide user information to Turkish law enforcement authorities more frequently. We will be meeting with representatives of the Turkish government when they visit Silicon Valley this week, and we intend to communicate our strong concerns about these proposals directly at that time.